* The Blueshirts were defeated by the Minnesota Wild, 3-2, tonight at Xcel Energy Center to fall to 8-5-1 overall, including a 3-3-1 mark on the road.
* Dane Byers, recalled from Hartford (AHL) earlier today, tallied his first career NHL goal at 5:33 of the second period; he finished the contest with three shots and a plus-one rating in 9:33 of icetime.
* Five Rangers players have notched their first career NHL goal this season, the most in a single season since 2005-06 (Dominic Moore, Petr Prucha, Ryan Hollweg, Maxim Kondratiev, Jarkko Immonen).
* Rangers defenseman Marc Staal recorded his second goal of the season early in the third period and logged 20:52 of icetime.
* Wade Redden registered an assist on Dane Byers’ second period goal and logged 15:25 of icetime.
* Artem Anisimov collected one assist and tied for the game-high with a plus-two rating.
* Vinny Prospal tallied his 13th assist of the season on Marc Staal’s third period goal, and he has now registered five assists in the last five games.
* Rookie defenseman Michael Del Zotto led all skaters with 24:01 of icetime, and delivered a team-high five hits.
* The Blueshirts practice schedule for tomorrow, October 31, is 12:00 p.m. at the MSG Training Center.
* The Rangers return to action on Sunday, November 1, when they will face-off against the Boston Bruins at Madison Square Garden (1:00 p.m.), in an Original Six matinee matchup; the game will be televised live on MSG Network and can be heard on 970 The Apple.

May be a nice city, but the people are scumbags. And they are littered throughout the media. ESPN and FOX, NBC are full of them, NY newspapers, everywhere you look, there they are.

It is a Boston lickfest all the time. That Dbag Milbury on NBC is a Bruins scumbag who insults Avery for his antics, but I think he was one of the dirtbag Bruins who went into the MSG crowd during that infamous brawl between players and fans and attacked Rangers fans.

Looks like we won’t have to worry about having the cap space to sign Staal and Girardi to big contracts in the offseason after all. And where are Dubi and Cally and their new contracts? If these guys didn’t come up through the system they would be getting ripped apart.

I think we went from having a very effective, albeit overused fourth line, to the worst in the league. How many times is Brashear going to turnover the puck. They were so concerned with Orr’s skating but I he looks like Pavel Bure compared to our goon!

Bill Pidto is horrible. Stop talking about the injuries. If you can’t win against the worst team in the east and west without Gaborik than you need to find another 19 players. Besides the kids have more goals than Higgins as of now anyway.

P.S. Safe=Death!! Bullshit! Unsafe equals Lundqvist being shelled on a nightly basis. What I wouldn’t give for a defensively “responsible” team. Time to change the system Torts. You don’t have the ingredients to make this cake.

1. Prospal-Played very well and his fire on the bench was great teaching the kids.

2. Anisimov-We all wanted him to get more minutes, and he played a very good game. Was the only Ranger to win face offs too. He’s still so young and needs to add some muscle which he will as his body matures, but tonight was a great learning experience for him.

3. Del Zotto-Was great in his own zone and tried the home run passes. This is a good learning experience for him as well as he has to learn how to run the PP without Gaborik.

4. Byers-Kid can play. That was a great garbage goal. I think they should keep him up and park him in front of the net on the second PP unit. He’ll surprise everyone with how much loose change he picks up. He’s strong and a pretty good skater.

“Safe=Death” is just as stupid as “5 in the picture” was. It sounds like Rangers are playing two extreme styles in the last 2 years. How about they just play a balanced game with responsibility on defense AND offense for a change?

got carped. repost
cccp- remember when dru hit someone behind minnys net and just kinda tapped the puck in front but it hit the skate of backstrom? jowe was like” oh good play by drury, he steals the puck and does a great job to get it free and send it in front” or somethin liek that. i sware that was probably the 2nd time dru had even touched the puck the whole night. this team has gotten so boring lately!! this is the kinda crap that makes hockey unwatchable for the casual fan. if i was a casual fan or trying to get a casual or non fan into hockey, this one game alone would turn me off of it forever. how does torts not get these guys ready to play a freakin hockey game? they dont even pass the puck to ach other anymore, they just play pinball across the ice. anybody see the original dawn of the dead, where theyre in the shopping mall and at the end they show the zombies in the hockey rink and u see a couple of them layin and playing on the ice,falling down,limping around aimlessly and knocking the goal net around? lol it reminded me of that scene from the movie!!

Well, it looks like the rest of the league have figured out the Rangers dirty little secret:

You can attack the Ranger net at high speed, and there is no one to slow you down or stop you.

The absence of big, tough crease-clearing defensemen has been a problem for years. Management has done nothing to address this problem, and the Rangers will continue to be a mediocre team until they do. But don’t hold your breath.

I have been hoping that Drury would snap out of his funk – but I’ve given up on him – it is clear that he is hopeless, and useless. Any number of Hartford players would be more productive than him. They’d love a chance to show what they can do. Give them that chance!

This is earily similar to why he got the ax from Tampa. He tried this system with a young defensive core that just could not deal with it. We are seeing the same thing now. When this system does not work it is because the opposition can expose whatever weakness or opportunity our D exhibits. Neutral zone turnover. Bad bass. Poke check. doesn’t matter. It is so quick that our guys either do not see it or do not respond quickly enough. This is in terms of coverage. Staal loses the puck at center ice and there noone covering. It was either too quick or someone should have covered for him and didn’t. This is the RISK side. The risk is TOO high.

olga- exactly!!! great point folkyerself!! its one extreme failure to another!! only hope for this team is if gabby gets healed and aCTUALLY plays the rest of the season. without him we are worse than rennys team. what was worse, this game, the islander game or the st louis game and thrasher games last season? i think its a 4 way tie for the biggest crosbyfest on ice

I’ll be the 1st to say BRING BACK SHANNY for 1 season since Captain Invicible Dreary shows no remorse of the lose tonight and the last game. We need leadership, something that Prospal was trying to do tonight all by himself.

I’ll be the 1st to say BRING BACK SHANNY for 1 season since Captain Invisible Dreary shows no remorse of the lose tonight and the last game. We need leadership, something that Prospal was trying to do tonight all by himself.

yes the big crease clearing d man isnt what lost us these games. our turnovers,bad outlet passing, bad passing in general. any semblance of a coordinated attack or forecheck, any sustained pressure, and any balls. teams captain has no balls, and so he doesnt inspire his team. and alot of other guys who are basically 3rd liners and kids from the pack. gotta remeber that alot of these guys are getting bounced from line to line rtoo. almost as bad as renny did. maybe worse. dont know if thats really helping because youre not givinbg these guys a chance to get any rhythm when you do this

3) drury is not the only one with vanilla comments, girardi sounded just the same, they all sound the same

4) dubi was less visible than drury. did dubi even play or was that higgins????

5) cally finally…FINALLY showed some emotion

6) we need a crease clearing hard hitting physical d man badly

7)PAP needs to head back to hartford, byers can stay if he wants. I thought his penalty was a “good” penalty and I wish cally, avery, dubi, staal, girardi would take penalties like that

Lastly, I like torts, but i think his constant shifting of lines is bad. I love his “accountability” for the players, but instead of destroying whatever continuity players have by playing with the same linemates then sitting one guy at the end of the bench for a period and a half and moving everyone around the rest of the game, sit them in the pressbox the next game. Atleast then you have constant lines in a game and maybe into the season more where guys can mesh and gel with linemates.

I honestly think some guys play with less of an edge due to the fact if they get a penalty then they get benched for a time and it takes the edge out of some player because they do not want to get benched (avery for sure). Torts needs to let some guys play their game and if we end up short handed then this phenomenal goalie we have should (SHOULD) make the stops in most shorthanded situations….right?!?! He is that good……right?!?!?!!

you guys are awesome!! were missing a bunch of regular “heads” tonight but we pulled through with a win for carp!! i think anybody(including me) that had to suffer through that giant clusterbyfuglien of a game, and is up at this hour posting and kickin butt all night deserves a big cheers from my hieneken 22 ounce to you and yours!! happy holidays boners!!!! and good stuff all around!!

The thing is, this organization is so backwardly run that we had the best player in the universe, Jaromir jagr, and his talents were wasted with Renney, and he still scored 50+, maybe 54 goals in a season (before the refs decided they were not going to allow that anymore).

Had we had Torts with the veteran group then, and Jaromir, could you have imagined that team.

I forgot our D-men from those years. Roszi, Tyutin, poti, malik and I just cannot remember any others.

wouldnt wanna suffer with any othjer bunch of nutjobs than u guys!! including myself!! good night1

p.s- big props to mikeA for keepin it real and pointing out some positives from the game. takes big nards to pull that off on a night full of frights and scary stuff goin on. at least our young guys are scoring and becoming a factor in the games. good for byers. played great and prospal too. PROSPAL FOR CAPN!!!!!

Shanny was only here 2 years and was a shell of himself at the end of the 2 years. I don’t think you can compare to Leetch and Graves. Let’s stick with the youth. If this team was a cup contender maybe i would consider it.

SHANNY wouldnt be doin anything to help this team right now. yea, hed be a good shot on the pp, but other than that and maybe yelling at rozy and duby between periods, hed be skatin on the 4th line but instead of a stick in his hands, hes rolling down the ice owith one of those 4 legged walkers that old people use when they have osteoporosis or hip replacements. put his old butt in a hover-round scooter with skate blades attached on the bottoms and let him scooter and motor down the ice crashin into people

agree tom. if we were any chance of being a cup contender id like him to play on the 4th line, pk, and some pp time late in games if we are down a goal. but at this point, hed be better off being an assistant coach somewhere but torts already has his full staff with sully. and we dont need any leadership qualities with capn clutch anyway!! lol

Grabachev-Thanks for that dude. Had a very miserable week with the car and phone and work and more which is not worth whining about to y’all but even though the Rangers played an uninspired game for the most part, watching guys like Anisimov and Del Z take another step in their development and Byers make the most of his opportunity was at least something positive.

And in case anyone’s curious, Hartford missing some of their tops guys got blown out 6-0 tonight. Regardless of what happens with Byers and Paranteau, they all those guys a diner. :)P

Grabachev-Thanks for that dude. Had a very miserable week with the car and phone and work and more which is not worth whining about to y’all but even though the Rangers played an uninspired game for the most part, watching guys like Anisimov and Del Z take another step in their development and Byers make the most of his opportunity was at least something positive.

And in case anyone’s curious, Hartford missing some of their tops guys got blown out 6-0 tonight. Regardless of what happens with Byers and Paranteau, they owe those guys a diner. :)P

I guess you guys are slamming Drury because gets paid so much money. He’s way over paid, everyone knows he’s overpaid. He did however play better than most of them tonight. That was just worse than the one in Long Island, and well I don’t have to say how bad that was. This team has major problems, one of the biggest problems is they have no idea what they are suppose to be doing. Granted they have had good games, but even the good ones long streaches with everyone is running all over the place, with bad turnovers. The coaches talk about puck control, keeping the puck longer, like if the talk about it, it’s going to happen. These guys are lucky to keep the puck on their stick three seconds. I realize they are short some key guys, but it should never be this bad. This team stinks, they played terrible against the Ilanders wenesday and the were worse tonight. Torts will not be happy, but he has to realise there are big holes in his system.

mike- ive had a terrible week too. first i get an infected tooth that was killin me for days, finally got it pulled, but the dentist didnt give me any meds, so ive been on ibuprofen and h=drinkin hineys, and it didnt clot right so i got a dry scket or whastever they call it, so its even more painful and sore. than i get to watch 2 of the worst hockey games ever by the rangers and my ex wife just came back in my lfe and now i got the emotional stress of dealin with her again. but at least im young and have a big “ROCKET RICHARD” lol. see ya guys manana after i take my kid trick or treating. i was thinkin of going as captain clutch, or brashear, but it might scare old people and children. might give old people heart attacks

Tom Foolery
October 30th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Shanahan? That ship sailed long ago. Drury is a joke of a captain but come on

Yeah well its time for that ship to sail again. No leadership on the ice brings more loses. Look at other teams that have stars out: Pens- No Malkin, however Crosby comes out to play and the same for the Blackhawks with no Toews, Kane picks up the slack and they win as well. We have no Gaby, Avery, or Higgins and with no leadership we get nowhere real fast. Lets not forget losing to the isles which was a farce.

night heads!! im out for real this time!! pray a quick return for gabby and a resurgence on sunday!!1 lets go rangers!!!!1 till the end boys, till the end will we cheer on our team!!!! we will go down with the ship if we must!!!!

While Drury was never a great player, he was generally a decent player. What we are NOW witnessing is someone who’s completely lost their confidence. Not a big deal if he wasn’t our captain and bagging 7 million/year….

some posts showed up while i was typing. I agree with balcony bob. We have been lacking that type d man since ulfie was traded and bueke was lost to PCS. Management has absolutely SUCKED in trying to fill that need and we will NEVER win the cup or go deep into the playoffs until that need is addressed.

If anyone says we lost these games because gabby was not in the line up, you can not also say that a physical d man would not have made a difference. If they did not play in the games you CANNOT know what impact they would have had. That being said, I believe gabby would have made a difference if he did play even if he didn’t score he would have opened the ice up for others. A physical d man will make a difference on the other teams mental state, even if he doesn’t throw a big hit or kill someone with a cross check in front of hank, the possibility of that happening to an opposing player will alter how they play. Over a period of time as other players see the d man lighting a guy up or putting someone out of the game on nhl on the fly or sportscenter highlights, they will remember and alter the way they play when they face us because they do not want that to happen to them. Having that kind of d man in your lineup makes a HUGE difference. we obviously do not have that kind of d men in our line up.

One last thing, if our d men would focus more on putting the opposing player on his BUTT (like burns did to cally)instead of making that pretty little poke check or being “positionally sound” (politcally correct hockey term for saying “non-physical player”) we would be hella better off as a team. Cally did not get a shot off did he, perfect d play!!!!

Domi,
Those other teams you mentioned have great superstar players to pick up the slack. We have no one close to Crosby or Kane here. This team has bigger problems than leadership. Do you really think Shanny at this point in his career makes this team better?

i don’t know what happened that got Torts kicked out of Tampa but if he was playing Safe=Death all his time there, well it did work long enough for the team to win a Cup. so, what is wrong with the mental make up of the Rangers players versus those sun-baked players in a non-hockey hotbed like Tampa?
also
if the Rangers remotely would do a better job of forechecking in the offensive zone and supporting their players there wouldn’t not be odd man rushes and we’d be spending considerable time wearing down our opponents….kind of like the early part of the season.
and finally
what happened to our all world goaltender?
now, i had to work and wasn’t able to watch much of the game so maybe Henrik kept us in this one but there have been times where he’s let in an easy one such as the first goal against the isles.

What’s funny to me is that the only people who have shown up in the last 2 games are Prospal, Lisin, Anisimov, Del Zotto, Paranteau, Redden (which I can’t f’in believe), and Byers. Boyle has been ok, but he takes some shifts off. Voros is just terrible, but he skates hard…which is usually half the speed of everyone else. Seems like everyone else is just on a joy ride out there.

Torts’ system will either win you a ton of games or lose you a ton if you are lazy. Right now we’re being the 2nd. It’s a shame when your best players are guys that were in juniors or the minors last or this year. Callahan, Dubinsky, Dreary, and a few others need to step up big time. Especially Staal and Girardi. Join the rush doesn’t mean try to skate through 5 guys like a pick up game. Skate hard, then dump it or push it into space for a guy to get it if nobody is open. Don’t just lose the puck and then you can’t get back.

Its been heard around hockey rinks recently that Donald Brashear’s Firebird was found wrecked in the parking lot and he will come out in the Rangers next game like Jefferson did in Fast Time at Ridgemont High after a similar incident.

Drury, Higgins & Rozsival need to go. Bring up Potter & Grachev and let Byers stay. Cally and Dubie better start producing also. It’s ironical that Prucha would bounce off players when he played for us but I believe he was one the Coyotes that caused Gaborik’s injury. Nice going Petr

Hockeymon, your right, Tort’s does have big holes in his system and he better correct them soon before the players give up on it. This is very young team that’s in desperate need of leadership and more sensible coaching.

it really gets to me that both higgins and avery didnt play, i mean wtf avery was just out…and all his injuries seems to appear on friggin a training. Is this team made out of glass? Why cant someone tell Torts to get rid of Drury, or atleaast tell him to start playing…
How come you win 7 games in a row, then out of nothing lose 5 of the last six. EMBARRASING!!

as usual like every other year except a couple here and there, this team doesn’t get it. Who’s accountable? Nobody, we get all the lip service from different coaches and I don’t get why guys like drury, rosival, redden and I could go on, continue to receive major minutes…its time to bite the bullet and dump these guys and their salaries and bring up the ALL the kids, see for once in this organization who is worthy and who is not. I am consistently seeing glaring mistakes by these “veterans” and honestly I don’t understand. How many times can you NOT dump the puck into the other team’s zone when going for a change, how many times can they give the puck away in the defensive zone, how many times does their attempted shots get blocked???

I could go on for hours about this!!

and what the heck is with dubinsky? The kid comes out a house on fire for 2 weeks and thats it????

and the sad part is Sather will be here FOREVER!!

we should be plucking scouts from teams like the wings and devils…notice they do something that most others dont? THEY WIN consistently year in and year out!!! Lou has that team in Jersey playing sound hockey all around, do you see that team make the mistakes we do? NO and they lose players left and right and someone is there to step in and do the job. The man is a hockey Genius!! The Rangers make the same mistakes year in and year out…blows my mind

and one more thing what the heck is Voros doing on this team??? this guy cant stand on his skates and has stone hands…what a waste and we get absolutely zero production from him, he doesn’t kill penalties, he cant score, cant fight that well, so what’s his purpose???

The sh*tiest teams in the East and the West notch their first win in regulation at the expense of the Rangers. Downright embarrassing to say the least. Put the C on Prospal. My kid’s pee wee leaguers have play with more heart than these past two performances.

Good morning all.. I hope everyone is over the dull aching pain that is Ranger hockey. I know this is early and there are injuries. I also have to give credit to the Wild for playing a very disciplined game. This Ranger team has to be better, they were beaten badly in the corners and along the boards. Turnovers constant turnovers, bad passing, bad decisions because of pressure. these guys are playing like there are lost, they came out of their own end looking like they had an inkling of what they were doing maybe ten times all night. The Wild keeper played well but he stopped mostly bad angle shots from the outside, not much from the middle. This team was tested last night and they failed miserably. Put a little pressure on them and they break down, They are easy to beat. They unable to play the system the coaches want they to play. I wonder if these guys really have a system or maybe they can’t get it across, but I see few signs of any kind of organized or set plays when there is a little pressure applied. Like anything under pressure there has to be an escape route, and I guess Torts hasn’t gotten that far down his lesson list yet. Hopefully todays the day he shares this secret, it will come in handy in Boston Sunday.

Injuries are a big thing this year in the NHLwith the condensed schedule. Every team is going through it. Filppula just got hurt for Detroit. Rangers might get lucky and miss Luongo because he’s hurt, Malkin just got hurt, etc.

Gaborik and Avery are not going to give you a full season if you look at their track records, and Higgins was banged up last year so it’s not that shocking.

I wanna see Byers get another shot tomorrow against his uncle’s old team (Lydon Byers Bruins goon in the mid 80s-early 90s who does their radio nowadays) and make it real tough for Torts to send him back.

I just want to say that Drury sucks. Ive given the guy 2 years to come around, bringing different players in and around him, Kotalik for him and the guy is blowing past him in the point margain. I dont care how much the guy prepares for the game, its obviously the wrong way. He sucks. There isn’t a thing he’s good for but the 5 on 3 penalty kill. Like someone said, an overpaid Blair Betts.

Bench Drury and make a statement to the team, or take the C off his jersey and give it to a guy like Prospal who obviously looks like he gives a sh** every game.

Carp:
1) Prospal is the Captain of this team. We absolutely must trade Drury if we cannot a) Scratch him, b)bench him, c)take the letter off his sweater without causing a commotion
2) The team needed a spark these last two games becuase we were playing lower half teams in KC and Minny, and had no Gabby. (by the way, every time he scores we yell Gabba Gabba Dooo like Fred Flinstone…its pretty cool). Instead we got bupkus.
3)Are Avery and Higgins truly hurt or are they healthy scratches being masked as injuries? Especially Higgins, who I still think will be good later this year, but is struggling so bad. Maybe he just can’t play in his home town. It happens.
4) Was the Hig School Football game fun?